Inside Pete Buttigieg's plan to overhaul the Supreme Court

[left-of-center2012]

As Democrats agonize over a spate of state laws restricting abortion rights and even a potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, one 2020 presidential candidate is putting an ambitious, long-shot plan to reform the Supreme Court front-and-center of his campaign.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has talked about his plan to overhaul the high court since his first days as a candidate. In short, it calls for expanding the number of justices from nine to 15, with five affiliated with Democrats, five affiliated with Republicans, and five apolitical justices chosen by the first 10.

No other candidate has made it central to his or her rationale for running and proposed presidential agenda. Buttigieg has said structural democratic reform would be his top priority, vowing to launch a commission on depoliticizing the Supreme Court on his first day as president.

Buttigieg hasn’t ruled out other possibilities for court reform, but says the 15-justice plan is “the one that I find most intriguing.”

Buttigieg says it’s rooted in a forthcoming paper in the Yale Law Journal by Daniel Epps, an associate professor of law of Washington University in St. Louis, and Ganesh Sitaraman, a law professor at Vanderbilt Law School.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/inside-pete-buttigieg-s-plan-overhaul-supreme-court-n1012491

[Salviati]

1. I think that further lock in to two party systems is undesirable

The constitution doesn't explicitly mention parties, and I don't think we should really design our systems to integrate them in ways that we can't work around as parties wax and wane throughout history. What happens if the republican party officially implodes? When do they lose their choice, and who decides who gets to officially make choices in the future?

I think it would be much better to just set it that each president gets two nominations, in the second and 4th year of their term. Openings through death or retirement would be counted against these appointments, and if none occur, then the most senior justices term is up upon appointment of a new justice.

[Mosby]

2. Making the SC overtly partisan will never work

Who decides "affiliation"? The Judges themselves won't want to state allegiances to a political party.